Charles > Charles's Quotes

“Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows. - Nisargadatta Maharaj”
― Jeff Foster, An Extraordinary Absence

“There is nothing to figure out, and nothing to understand. You are not a person. There is not such thing as a person. The so-called person is merely a thought in the mind of God. In truth, it’s even not that. There is only pure Awareness, Consciousness - formless, unborn and undying, and that is who you are. How can the apparent mind possibly comprehend this? It is not possible. The finite can never understand the infinite. The mind does not exist. Seek the Source of the mind, the Source of the ‘I-thought’, by constant, patient Self-enquiry. When the mind is quiet, You shine in all your glory. Be Yourself, and be happy.”
― Jeff Foster

“The reason I love rules and plans and religions is that people feel safe in them for a while. And, personally, I don't have any rules. I don't need them. There's a sense of order that goes on all the time as things move and change, and I am that harmony, and so are you. Not knowing is the only way to understand... Meanings, rules, the whole world of right and wrong, are secondary at best. I understand how some people think they need to live by rules...It's very frightening for them to watch the world unfolding in apparent chaos and not realize that the chaos itself is God in his infinite intelligence.”
― Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

“     Romantic love is the story of how you need another person to complete you. It’s an absolutely insane story. My experience is that I need no one to complete me. As soon as I realize that, everyone completes me.”
― Byron Katie, I Need Your Love - Is That True?: How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead

“The Work is merely four questions; it’s not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It’s nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you’ve got and enhance it. Any religion you have—they’ll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they’ll burn up anything that isn’t true for you. They’ll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.”
― Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

“Everything in the world is doing its job. The ceiling sits on the walls, the walls sit on the floor, the curtains are hanging in front of the windows; they’re all doing their jobs. But when you tell yourself a story about how reality is supposed to look, you end up arguing with the ceiling or the wall, and it’s hopeless. It’s like trying to teach a cat to bark. The cat won’t ever cooperate. “No, no,” you may tell it, “you don’t understand. You should bark. It would be so much better for you if you barked. Besides, I really need you to bark. As a matter of fact, I’m going to devote the rest of my life to teaching you how to bark.” And many years later, after all your sacrifice and devotion, the cat looks up at you and says, “Meow.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“Is it true?        2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?        3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?        4. Who would you be without the thought?”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“Music was no longer a metaphor for the real world somewhere out there. It was becoming the opposite. The “out there” stuff was the metaphor and the real part was, and is to this day, the music.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

“IN A CLEAR WAY, WE ARE BOUND TO OUR CULTURE. We understand the world because of the way we were taught to see.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

“If you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

“Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
― Thomas Merton

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.”
― Thomas Merton

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”
― Thomas Merton